The Roman Catholic church has come under regular shelling with the intensified
battle for the Rwandan capital.

The yard was stained with blood and strewn with shrapnel. It was not
clear who fired the shells, but some of the shells may have been rebel
missiles that soared over intended targets.

"We all want to get out of here, anywhere, just out of here,"
said the girl, who has spend a week inside Ste. Famille Church with 800
other Tutsis.

A 29-year-old Hutu at Ste. Famille, who gave his name only as Manasse,
reported five people killed.

A mortar round fired from across a valley exploded inside the church
complex as he spoke, kicking up dust and smoke.

Hundreds of Rwandans, most from the minority Tutsi ethnic group, have
taken wary refuge at Ste. Famille in a part of Kigali held by the Hutu-dominated
government.

The Tutsis live in fear even of the camp's Hutu guards. Militant Hutus
have swept into the red brick church to round up and kill Tutsis. On June
17, rebels broke through government lines to rescue about 600 refugees.

Mortar rounds that hit the compound May 1 killed a dozen people and
wounded more than 100. It was uncertain which side fired those shells,
too.

The fighting between government forces and rebels of the mainly Tutsi
Rwandan Patriotic Front broke out after President Juvenal Habyarimana,
a Hutu, died in a mysterious plane crash on April 6. Most of the 200,000
victims have been Tutsi civilians massacred by radical Hutu militias.

The rebels control two-thirds of the country, and last week began a
fierce offensive trying to overrun the rest of the capital.

During an hour's lull in the fighting Monday, aid workers rescued 45
badly wounded patients from a Red Cross hospital that has repeatedly come
under fire. The hospital, like Ste. Famille, is in the government-held
part of the capital.

At nightfall, the rebels pounded central Kigali with a heavy artillery
barrage. Small fires blazed on Mount Kigali, a strategic peak the rebels
have been trying to capture.

Plans to evacuate other refugees were called off because of the intensified
fighting.

The U.N. commander, Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, linked increased combat
in Kigali to the arrival of French peacekeepers in western Rwanda. Paris
says its mission is strictly humanitarian, but it has supported the government
in the past and the rebels fear the French troops will rob them of victory.

French soldiers, uncertain of their welcome, have been moving cautiously,
although refugees at Ste. Famille anxiously await their arrival.

Aloise Umuhibe, 19, with a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother, has spent
two months in a tiny, filthy room at the church. "When will the French
get here?" she wanted to know.

"We need the French, they must hurry," said Jean Nakerutumrna,
42, a Hutu who has sought refuge in the churchyard from the fighting.

All but about 30 French troops that circulate in Rwanda by day return
to bases in Zaire overnight.

About 1,350 French troops in all had arrived in Goma and Bukavu in Zaire
by Monday, up from 1,100 on Sunday. A French military spokesman said the
full 2,500-member force was to be in place in three or four days.

In a move with powerful symbolic significance, French troops on Saturday
began dismantling roadblocks where Hutu radicals massacred both Tutsis
and moderate Hutus.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front organized a huge demonstration against the
French intervention in Kayonza, 30 miles east of Kigali.

Thousands of mainly Tutsis shouted, "Mitterrand, accomplice of
murderers!" -- referring to French President Francois Mitterrand --
and "French troops out of Rwanda!"